I'll update this after the final weekend with us, Ospreys and Dragons all playing at home.

(Split the Judgement day attendance of 30410 between the two games @ 15205 each.)

Pro12

Blues

Dragons

Ospreys

Scarlets

Munster

Leinster

Ulster

Connacht

Glasgow

Edinburgh

Treviso

Zebre

Season Average

Blues

na

10413

10615

15205

6122

5063

7084

6874

5645

7245

6986

7513

8069

Dragons

8526

na

15205

6777

7118

6174

5165

5474

3916

4574

6026

5554

6773

Ospreys

8656

8732

na

13201

5766

8656

10049

6403

5679

8356

5089

6529

7919

Scarlets

9046

6521

14796

na

6487

6329

6506

6111

6504

5675

5847

6708

7320

European Home Games

HC

1

2

3

Blues

11573

6144

12125

Ospreys

12378

6385

8347

Scarlets

8388

7591

7516

Amlin

Dragons

4474

4023

6063

Interesting to compare how close the Dragons average gate is in the league to us, yet how poorly attended their Amlin games were. Blues next season figures will also be way down on what they accomplished this season you'd imagine.

Disappointing European home attendance for us this season, how we couldn't even get a decent crowd in for the first home game (especially after that Quins away win) is worrying to say the least.

Judgement Day is a boost to the Blues and Dragons Rabo averages. I think it's a mistake for us and the Ospreys not to host a home Judgement Day every other season alternating between the Blues and Dragons as opposition.

Judgement Day is a boost to the Blues and Dragons Rabo averages. I think it's a mistake for us and the Ospreys not to host a home Judgement Day every other season alternating between the Blues and Dragons as opposition.

We've dropped almost 2,000 from our average gate in two years.

Don't think they'd have Scarlets Ospreys game for judgement day, its the rare time when parc y scarlets is filled out and they can sell plenty of food and drink.

Would putting it in millennium result in a bigger crowd? Wouldn't be a huge amount more.

We can't do anything with the prices, but I hope the club are thinking of ways to arrest the decline because that can't be helping our finance

When Ben Morgan was sold, it was a killer - but we had to understand the reasons.

When Nigel Davies left, an uneasy feeling about the future was developing - but he wasn't all that great a coach, was he? So we swallowed that and carried on.

When George North was sold, people did start giving up. They started giving up because they saw the club giving up. It was as much symbolic as it was about the player himself. It sent out a message of futility and you could sense it at the matches and with supporters last season and this season. We were demoralised and all the momentum the club had created between 2009 and 2012 was completely undone.

So, not surprising at all.

We need a financial injection to recover now. No amount of promotions and PR will make a dent. We need a better season on the field, followed by a summer where we don't lose any of our best players, and we recruit a player or two that excites the supporters.

Not easy given the disgraceful situation in Welsh rugby. In the meantime, we just need to hope the core support sticks with the club during this period. We've certainly got no future otherwise.

Mike is completely correct, there is little hope in the support of the region at the moment. We've seen all our best players leave and everyone in Europe overtake us in signing players while the Union has tried to run us into the ground.

Without playing exciting rugby, playing winning rugby or a sense of hope for the future, crowds always suffer. We played exciting rugby and had a bit hope we could do well when Nigel and Ben were here. Our crowd numbers were growing and there was a feeling we could build on something.

Any sort of confidence in the welsh domestic game has been eroded since the new PA really started to bite. It isn't going to get much better for a good few seasons too. We badly need money and I am not sure where its coming from. Times are tough bois bach.

Christ. I've got jet-lag and I'm back in work. I might get nihilist tattooed on my face and go and walk into the sea now, Mike.

As usual, you're spot-on though. That season we beat the Saints away in the Heineken Cup really felt as if it was building to something special. Talk about premature. Things look dramatically different now. I genuinely don't know where we're going at the moment and I wonder if the club does; I mean, it's clearly been tough for them as a business over the last couple of years and our position is so elastic - the crowds (as you've pointed out) seem to respond to every recruitment decision the club makes so the only way to bring folks back is to sign some 'big names'. And I can't see that happening because we can't afford to keep our best players, let alone sign a 'name'.

It's a bit of a spiral of decline that we nearly got ourselves out of. Like a street drinker cleaning himself up and then burgling a Spar for White Ace. Or something like that.

Now, where's my local tattoo parlour...

Edited by PearlJam - 06 May 2014 at 2:55pm

If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose.

We can't do anything with the prices, but I hope the club are thinking of ways to arrest the decline because that can't be helping our finance

When Ben Morgan was sold, it was a killer - but we had to understand the reasons.

When Nigel Davies left, an uneasy feeling about the future was developing - but he wasn't all that great a coach, was he? So we swallowed that and carried on.

When George North was sold, people did start giving up. They started giving up because they saw the club giving up. It was as much symbolic as it was about the player himself. It sent out a message of futility and you could sense it at the matches and with supporters last season and this season. We were demoralised and all the momentum the club had created between 2009 and 2012 was completely undone.

So, not surprising at all.

We need a financial injection to recover now. No amount of promotions and PR will make a dent. We need a better season on the field, followed by a summer where we don't lose any of our best players, and we recruit a player or two that excites the supporters.

Not easy given the disgraceful situation in Welsh rugby. In the meantime, we just need to hope the core support sticks with the club during this period. We've certainly got no future otherwise.

excellent post mike sums it up nicely.

30th june 1986- 30th june 2011.25 years roofing,i wouldn't call that dodgy.

Christ. I've got jet-lag and I'm back in work. I might get nihilist tattooed on my face and go and walk into the sea now, Mike.

As usual, you're spot-on though. That season we beat the Saints away in the Heineken Cup really felt as if it was building to something special. Talk about premature. Things look dramatically different now. I genuinely don't know where we're going at the moment and I wonder if the club does; I mean, it's clearly been tough for them as a business over the last couple of years and our position is so elastic - the crowds (as you've pointed out) seem to respond to every recruitment decision the club makes so the only way to bring folks back is to sign some 'big names'. And I can't see that happening because we can't afford to keep our best players, let alone sign a 'name'.

It's a bit of a spiral of decline that we nearly got ourselves out of. Like a street drinker cleaning himself up and then burgling a Spar for White Ace. Or something like that.

Now, where's my local tattoo parlour...

Funny you should mention that Saints game.

All the work done by the academy and the reforms put in by Nigel Davies had borne fruit by the end of 2011. We had developed one of the best batches of young players ever to come through at a club in Wales. It culminated with the bonus point win at Franklin's Gardens just months after they had contested the previous season's Heineken Cup final.

It was a pretty extraordinary turnaround from the shambolic state of affairs that Nigel inherited in the summer of 2009. To get into that position two years later, and on a reduced budget, was a tremendous achievement from everyone at the club.

At the end of 2011, we had the ingredients to put the club back on the map in Europe and the platform for a really exciting era potentially.

But for that to happen we needed to maintain the momentum by two things happening. Firstly we needed a resolution to the WRU-RRW situation so that our gold-standard batch of stars would be the first in the queue to be retained in Wales under a new agreement. Secondly, we needed to avoid bad luck on the field in key moments.

We had two desperate bits of misfortune. After winning our opening two European games, we had Munster at home in round 3. Unfortunately this game came a week after Wales' extra Autumn test.

Not only did this hamper our preparation while Munster had a full two weeks together, it also cost us George North who got injured in that Australia game. We ended up losing to Munster by a single score and no-one will convince me that we wouldn't have won if we'd had the two weeks preparation time and George in the side. Indeed, Munster's try that day came from an individual error from Dan Newton who wouldn't have been playing had George not got injured the week before with Wales.

The misfortune of George's injury and Wales' extra fixture cost us, IMO, a first Heineken Cup quarter final in 5 years and at least about £300,000 in competition prize money (more than the transfer fee we actively sold George to Saints for). A run to the European Cup knock-out stages would have not only kept the momentum going, it would have given it an extra charge.

The second bit of misfortune was, ironically, the pace of Ben Morgan's emergence. Had a few variables not come together at the same time, there was a strong possibility that Ben would have opted to represent Wales and we'd have secured a massive ball-carrier for a number of years.

Our decline, regardless of the play-off place in 2013, began at the end of that season. Ben's departure left a massive hole on the field. The lack of resolution with the WRU meant that Nigel Davies walked - he could see what was coming - and our big players followed. Not all of them, but enough to stop-dead the progress and put us into a tail-spin.

Bit of a hard-luck tale, but things could have been so different for us now had the WRU wanted to back regional rugby, and a couple of things went our way.

Next season for us I believe is the biggest in the clubs history fail next year and it could be the end of the road. We need to go out in summer and buy big and really go for it, the fans will come If we play good rugby a top class 10 centre and 8 we could be up there I believe we don't need to get in volume just class.

A superb post Mike we really do need a special season to get supporters back. I don't care where they come from as long as they come to the Parc. We need a cash injection, does anyone now how much money we will get from BT?

Next season for us I believe is the biggest in the clubs history fail next year and it could be the end of the road. We need to go out in summer and buy big and really go for it, the fans will come If we play good rugby a top class 10 centre and 8 we could be up there I believe we don't need to get in volume just class.

I'd say a wing more than a centre. With King returning as well as Scott Williams, Gareth Maule, Adam Warren and Nic Reynolds were alright for now in midfield.

Excellent posts, Mike. The key points for me - the situation we find ourselves in now is the direct result of the WRU's long term policy of divide and conquer, death by a thousand cuts. Proves to me how important that decision was not to renew the PA.

The other key point is the hard-core 5.5 - 6k or so who are the very life blood of the club. We must do all we can to at least retain these and hopefully increase this number.

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot create polls in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forum